Nephilims, Cambions, and Other Troublesome Creatures
by agesofaquarius
Summary: From Reapers to Phantoms, Dante wasn't very well versed in the lore of the Demon World, but he knew one thing: one slash with Rebellion or a lucky shot with Ebony and Ivory was enough to make them go poof. That is, until these people calling themselves Nephilims started messing up his routine and getting in his way. And what's this about his brother releasing Lucifer from Hell?
1. Chapter 1

**Reapers**

 **Psychopomp, or Guide of Souls; serves to sever the last ties between the soul and the body and to guide the deceased to the next world without having any control over the fact of the victim's death.**

Usually when he took jobs that didn't pay much, he tried to get done with the task as soon as possible with the least amount of ammo used. However, today, he was having more fun than he should have been with this one mission.

Dante laughed as he flipped over a large black cloaked reaper, using his trusty Ebony and Ivory to shoot two hot-as-hell silver bullets straight into the personification of the demon soul that had (unfortunately) escaped through a Hell Gate. Said Hell Gate had been destroyed for almost three months now but he was still having to clean up the mess that idiotic cult had caused. Usually the kid was on garbage duty, but he hadn't heard from the punk in about a week and God forbid Dante just let the demons trample everything in their path.

It screamed momentarily before bursting into a cloud of dust. Like a corpse so dried out that the smallest touch could disrupt what connection was still holding it together before falling to an non-descriptive neutral gray pile.

Two more seemed to take its place as a soft glowing orange portal opened up, and more reapers spilled in. Some of the reapers still had lost souls connected to them with thick, rusted chains. Their screams of terror could barely be heard over the blasts from Dante's weapons.

When one was shot down, two, sometimes even three, more showed up, waving their scythes high above their heads and bringing them down onto where Dante was standing. A few dug into his skin, and while it stung like a bitch, Dante continued to jump around and slice through them as well as he could. However, as soon as some of the dust cleared from the small enclosure, he found himself trapped alone in a room filled with reapers. He almost couldn't tell the difference between the lost souls and their weapons, they were moving so fast.

Claustrophobia was beginning to become a reality for the half devil.

"Now this is what I call a party!" he says, but there isn't as much enthusiasm as he had thought there would be. Three lunge at him and he quickly holsters his guns to free his hands for Rebellion.

However, just as he goes to swipe, three light green arrows are embedded in their gray skulls, and the demons burst into dust. He looks in the direction they came from to find a bulky figure kneeling over a hole in the ceiling of the abandoned building. Dante nods to them in thanks before swinging at the other group that comes forward to take the fallens' place. He hears a thud from behind him and then a slight pressure on his back, but it is gone in seconds.

Turning to swing at a reaper to his left, Dante uses this as his excuse to get a better look at the spinning figure. Their silver bow glows with a few violet and blue runes engraved in it as the light green and blue arrows of (what he can only describe as light) make one fluid motion to go from the quiver on the figure's back to being shot from the golden string of the silver bow. The target (the reapers' skulls) is hit with a scrape of metal on bone before they burst away into a cloud. Dante goes back to battling his half of the demons.

When he's down to his last two, he's panting for breathe. It takes a lot to get him roused up like he is, but the hunting high is one that no money or souls could buy. He moves to the left, but obviously it was not planned for by his helping hand and a blue arrow goes straight through his arm. The arrow head still hits the reaper it was aimed at, blood sliding down the glowing blue rod as it meets the demon before dripping to the ground.

Dante groans as he swings Rebellion, before grabbing at the wound. It felt as if his arm was about to explode. The throb he felt from the wound disappeared as soon as the reaper dropped into a pile of dust. The torn muscle stitched itself back together within a minute.

"That fucking hurt," he grumbles, looking at the red, irritated skin through the hole in his sleeve that the arrow had created.

The figure just shrugs, before pulling another arrow and killing a demon going for the distracted Dante.

He tries to get a good look at them, never seeing them before or noticing their scent, before the largest reaper Dante has ever seen raises from the ground. It's at least three times the size of a usual one, and the amount of souls it has connected to it makes up the usual black cloak they are seen wearing.

"Well damn," he says, resting Rebellion on his shoulder as he whistles from the size of it. He turns to his impromptu partner, who had been too far away to get a good look at, but finds they have covered their face with a pair of goggles and a faded bandana. Behind them a growing blaze rises as it catches on the old, dusty furniture of the room. "Didn't think it could get any worse."

The half-demon could swear he heard his partner say something, but between the screams of the souls and the bandana muffling their words, Dante could only shrug and lunge at the demon looming over them both. As he sliced at the arm holding the scythe, he saw them aim a large cut off shotgun at the chains of the souls to free them. It only took a few blasts of rock salt and iron shavings to free them, weakening the demon who fed off the terror of the lost souls.

Kill two birds with one sword.

At least that's how he thought the phrase went.

"Hey, Trick Shot!" he yells, landing on the shoulder of the demon and pointing his twin guns to the head of the demon. "Shoot a couple this way, and try not to hit me this time."

The figure raises their gloved hand, showing off the glorious image of their slim semi-gloved middle finger before they holster their shotgun to a strap on their right leg and knot three arrows at once; blue, green, blue. They shoot off, and hit in a perfect line on the demon's skull-face; mouth, nostril, forehead. The ends explode, taking away bits of dust and bone with them, but the demon still stands. Dante takes the moment of weakness and sends ten quick shots of Ivory and Ebony into the gaping jaw of what had been a demon skull.

The demon disappears before him, dragging what few souls with left down to the depths of Hell, clouding the room with black dust before the growing fire uses it to spread further into the building.

Was it hot in here or just him?

"And this is my queue to leave," Dante says, flipping through the air and landing closer to the door to run out. He's surprised to find his partner has disappeared into the flames, going in the opposite direction. However, when a wall falls between them, shielding his view with bright flames, he decides not to follow.

The front door of the building bursts open from the heat of the fire and one lucky shot with Ebony.

Dante brushed a semi-gloved hand through his hair, coughing when some of the black demon dust was inhaled with his quickly working lungs. It was a quick mission, especially with the help of that random that showed up right as another cluster of the reapers showed up to find their brethren dead. He momentarily wondered why they had gone in a separate direction.

Lady and Trish were awaiting him outside, guns ready in case any of the demons managed to escape the blade of Rebellion or shot of Ebony and Ivory. Of course, they were not surprised to find that they simply wasted an hour of their time waiting on him. However, they did care to glance at each other when another figure stepped out of the burning building also not seconds after Dante did; dark blue coat fluttering at the ends, but the metal clasps keeping it together across their chest.

"Looks like you made a new friend, Dante."

The man smirks and glances over his shoulder, pleased to find his partner had come back. He tried to catch some definitive physical attribute of the random, but the makeshift mask obscured any possibility of that.

"Seems that way," he huffs, before holstering his twin guns and stitching Rebellion back on its holder sewed into his red coat. "Thanks for the help. I thought I was a goner."

"We both know that's a lie," the figure says, voice deep but still more feminine than their bulking physique suggested. The dark gray goggles and bandana used to hide the face of the woman are slid down around her neck before she takes the moment to secure her slightly tarnished silver bow across her body. The quiver holding her arrows fizzles from sight in a small burst of yellow light, but her shotgun continues to slap against the denim around her leg with each step.

"What gives you that idea?"

"Come now, Son of Sparda, I can smell your demon aura from ten miles away."

Dante smirks, but can't help the rolling of his light colored eyes.

"What is with it and people connecting me to the old man?"

"Because they know of his strength, and anyone with blood relations must be just as strong, if not stronger."

Dante pauses, watching the woman as she unbuttons her coat. She shakes off the dark leather of the soot and demon dust that caught in the material. Underneath he can make out a dark brown vest covering an off-white shirt. Her dark blue pants match her coat, but the few rips and holes (sparingly covered by a few brown leather holsters) show they were haphazardly pushed into the tops of brown boots. The building collapses behind her in the lasts of the fire the reapers had created when the sparks from Rebellion and their scythes caught on an old, dry mattress.

"Haven't heard that one before."

"Then you should take it as a compliment."

Her as-a-matter-of-fact tone and smirk almost defeats Dante's signature one. She flips her hair from underneath her collar of her jacket as she begins to walk away. It reaches just below her collar bone, knotted at the ends from sweat and being moved against the inside of her jacket, but otherwise it falls messily in tight curls. Her skin has a healthy glow, a _human_ glow, even though it seems to be unnaturally pale. She needed some sun. Her eyes were wrinkled with the lack of sleep and there were countless cuts across her right cheek. A bruise began to grow under her left eye and had momentarily spread across her nose to her right eyebrow.

Those eyes… sunken into her skull like death was upon her, hanging like a loose thread that only continued to unravel after every cut.

"Neat bow!" he calls after her, having experienced firsthand the power it could do. Luce and Ombra never missed, and it seemed that bow had the same ferocity when it came to vanquishing enemies. The cuts and bruises almost seem to disappear the more and more he looked at them, following her with his eyes as she begins to walk away from the trio.

She tosses her hand into the air, her two fingers closest to her thumb knocking to the side in an informal salute. Kicking off of a nearby dumpster, she jumps onto the roof of a decaying brick building and the clicking of the heels of her boots disappears not long after she leaves their sight. As a half-demon, he could smell the rotting flesh of the reapers before he walked on the block. Almost like he had cracked open a few dozen rotten eggs and left them to bake in the hot summer sun.

Her scent was not the usual human scent of soap and coffee that he usually got from customers or his girls. Oh no, she smelled of fresh linen and wildflowers. She had called his scent a 'demon aura' and the only thing he could describe hers as was the scent of something equally divine.

"Well then, shall I go get paid?"

Trish and Dante look to Lady, both wearing aspirated expressions.

"What?" She looked clueless. "Do you know how much damage you've done? Plus you still owe me!"

Dante just walks off, clasping his hands together behind his head. Trish smirks and shakes her head as she follows the half devil, holstering Luce and Ombra into the back of her black pants. Lady huffs and slings her large gun across her back to tie up the tail end of their trio.

"Did she smell funny to you?" Trish says quietly to Dante, keeping an ear open as Lady chatters loudly over her cellphone to another client that the Devil May Cry trio may be in business with, shortly.

Dante nods.

Even after knowing Trish for years, it still catches him by surprise that she's a full demon and not another oblivious human, like what Lady can be during her few moments of ignorance.

"Not demon, not human."

Dante nods again. There's only so many beings out there. Of course, demons and humans made up the majority of that.

"At least, not the demonic we're used to."

Dante looks to Trish, pausing mid step before falling back into the swagger he had beaten out for himself. The weight of Rebellion was comfortable on his back, but he still felt another, stranger, pressure.

"But really, we've only handled demons. You don't think..."

"You're doing that thing again, Trish," Dante says, but he finds some nostalgia in the subconscious mutterings of inner thoughts. His mother had done that, rest her soul. Vergil had picked it up from her too before they were split apart. Oh how things had been so simple before the world of demons grew a thirst for his blood...

"Whatever she is, she definitely knows how to control it."

"That's what I'm afraid of." He glances to Trish from the corner of his eye.

(And he was just as thirsty for their blood as they were for his.)

"Should we worry about her?"

"I don't see why we should."

Of course, Dante's opinion didn't hold much weight in their conversation and he could already see Trish's brain cranking out any and all ideas of sabotage that she saw as acceptable.

"You'll regret those words."

Dante smugly mused, "Only because you'll make me."

The banter between the old friends caused a small smile to tug at the corner of Trish's mouth before Lady crashed down the amusement she held for just that moment.

"Got a job on the other side of town. C'mon, you two. I'm not paying you to just sit around."

"You don't pay us at all," Dante taunts smoothly at the dark haired woman. Yet, all she does in retaliation is peek over the colored glass of her sunglasses and sends a look that has Dante briskly walking away, hands up in surrender. He can't argue with these women. It's not worth the uphill battle. He'd rather file his taxes. (The same taxes he's been evading for the last five years because all of his work is under the table and it must have been Mundus himself who created the lengthy process it is to record and process all the money Dante _doesn't_ have.)

Above them, the temporary partner that had accompanied Dante for his quick little reaper mission looks at them from the broken window of an old office building. She can smell the musty rot of the demon girl, the blonde, and the other leaves a bland taste in her mouth, like most humans. There's a sparkle in her brown eyes, one that hasn't been there in years. The archer glances down at the ticking wrist watch hooked around her left arm before she turns away from the window, counting the minutes in her head.

Dante glances over his shoulder at one of the broken windows of the abandoned street. He watches her shadow disappear. Turning forward, he's surprised to find her jumping rooftops. While she stays hidden in the shadows, the rustling of her coat doesn't blend into the night breeze as well as she thought it would.

He counts the light tap of her boots, and he can tell by Trish's posture that she's heard the hunter too. However, from Dante's nonchalant posture, she does not worry. It's only when Dante is bristled that one should run. After all, it can only mean Hell has come back when Dante becomes serious.


	2. Chapter 2

**Chapter Two**

 **Nephilim**

 **The offspring of the sons of God and the daughters of men. They possess the ability to travel between the different worlds at their own whim and can use a fraction of their fathers' powers in a personified form of a weapon or a special ability. No one Nephilim is alike.**

 **..**

"I didn't think there was a serious bone in your body, Dante."

Looking up from his strawberry sundae, the half devil glares momentarily at Lady befoe going back to his ice cream. The tarty taste of the fruit blended well with the creamy cold treat. Not to mention that homemade whip cream was to die for and Dante could never get enough of it. He pops another spoonful into his mouth, crossing his eyes at Lady childishly.

Trish smirks and shakes her head, dipping another salty fry into her chocolate shake. The waitress that was standing behind the counter looked at the trio with weary eyes, and Trish almost felt remorse for the batty bitch, but quickly changed her mind about that emotion. Lady glanced at the two as they snacked on their midnight junk foods.

"I'm just sayin', babe. You can never be too careful with hunters. She may be just like you," he ends his statement with a joke, and it earns him a swift smack on the head. Dante frowns and looks down at the broken spoon in his hands. He had been biting down when she smacked him and the pain caused his teeth to clench on the cheap metal.

Dante licks his ice cream from the spoon head before dropping the two pieces on the table.

"Hey, Miss Abel, can I get another spoon?"

"I'm gonna start giving you plastic spoons if you break another good one," the middle aged woman scolded the half demon, which was a funny sight to the girls. Dante rubs the back of his neck as the woman brings him a new spoon.

"Aw, don't be like that, Miss Abel. You know I didn't mean to. Blame Lady, here. She's the one that smacked me."

"I'm surprised you felt it with how thick that skull of yours is."

Trish and Lady laugh together as Dante sulks, but he thanks the woman for the spoon, nonetheless. She walks back behind the counter and into the back kitchens, leaving them the only patrons of the small midnight diner. The world was quiet... calm, even, and for once Trish felt content. There was no sudden movements of battle or cries of demons coming to destroy her for her change in sides of the never ending battle of humans and demons. There was no trouble.

Just her and two friends and a chocolaty snack in front of her.

The front window of the diner crashed through, shattering glass throughout the area. Dante ducked his head only a centimeter to dodge a glowing blue arrow. It burst into light as soon as it hit the table, leaving behind only the shadow of a scorch mark.

"What the hell!" Miss Abel yelled as she came out of the kitchen, the door swinging behind her. The cook was on her heels, but quickly grabbed the woman by the waist and pulled her back in as a canine like demon jumped in through the skeleton of the window and onto the dark coated figure.

"I'll pay for that!" the woman says, and Dante instantly pinpoints the voice as that of his impromptu partner from earlier that week. However, he can't smell her, her fresh, clean scent does not waft through the air like the burnt, charcoal smell of the Hellhounds barking and shooting fire balls at her. And, the image of her is wispy, like he's staring through water trying to look at her.

"Dante," she calls out, her voice surprisingly calm.

He is pulled through a tunnel of light, and his hair blows back out of his face as if he's moving at high speeds, but when everything grows still and goes back to one coherent vision, he stumbles as if off balance. Dante had stayed in the same spot the entire time.

The world is coated in a strange orange tint, and wisps of black vines now crawl up the walls. The floor is cracked and off balance. The Hellhounds are now chasing toward him, but most of them end up with an arrow in their hind quarters. As Dante looks around, trying to get a grasp of where he's just been transported to as well as fight off the hounds that come to bite off his head, he can't help the double take he does when he sees the woman in front of him.

She has _wings_.

Of course, they're folded neatly against her back, moving with her body as she plucks a feather from them. The feather then transforms into an arrow of light that's knotted to the silver bow. That feather-turned-arrow destroys the hound coming straight for the momentarily stunned Dante.

"What in the shitting hell," he says, drawing Rebellion just quick enough to slice through the clawed paw coming to swipe at his neck.

"Welcome to Limbo, Dante."

She smirks, her brown eyes flashing a golden yellow before she pulls the trigger of her cut off shogun and blasting a hole straight through the last canine. She jumps out the window, small black vines following her as she jumps into the unfamiliar world. He turns to find Trish and Lady looking at where he should be, but he can't see their expressions. They are nothing more than black, void spaces of where their bodies should be. The only solid thing now is him and that girl.

"How the hell do I get out of here?" he yells, chasing after her. He jumps out the window also and has to quickly kick off a chunk of concrete to catch on some stable platform. What should have been the road leading to just a half mile away from his shop is nothing more than disfigured platforms of concrete and floating cars and broken pieces of metal foundation.

It only takes Dante a second to follow the girl, her glowing yellow aura a dead give away in the strange orange and teal blue hued world that he has been dragged into. He had heard of Limbo, but it was more of a thing that he thought souls went to. He knew of _Purgatorio_ , he knew of the "cleansing of souls in fire and forge" to make them holy again and suitable for the eternal _Paradiso_ or which judged them too defiled and dropped them to their level of the _Inferno_.

He knew of all that.

After all, he was named after the famous poet who wrote of its existence. His life was nothing more than a divine comedy. His parents had to have been avid readers. Hell, Sparda had been around for over two thousand years; he needed something to do with his time. Probably met the guy.

 _This_ was Limbo? The famed Purgatory where all monsters and demons and souls alike went after death? It looked like a bad Halloween movie that would just go straight to that shitty scifi channel he would flip to when nothing else was on.

"Hey! You! Wait just a damn min- whoa!"

Dante barely caught himself as the platform of asphalt began to tilt from his weight as he moved from surface to surface. The grips of his gloves helped him stay on as he kicked his body to pull himself back up on it. Two tight hands wrap around his wrists and he's pulled back onto the platform as if he weighs nothing more than a pillow.

"Isn't this freeing?" she asks, holding his wrists with much excitement. It's almost like she's going to bounce away.

She's got wings, and he swears that's a halo hovering above her head, but its gone with a blink of an eye. Her brown eyes flash back and forth to a golden yellow and her hair is just a bit _too_ perfect.

"We can finally be ourselves. Finally show just how _powerful_ the Nephilim race is."

"Be what? What the hell is a _Nephilim_?"

"It's you, Dante! It's me, too! Your father is a fallen angel, and thus given the evil connotation of a demon. My father is an angel, someone who did not fall. We are Nephilim. Half divine, half human. We have so much power, Dante. We could rule the world-"

A bullet slides through her skull like a hot knife through butter. Blood splatter across Dante, making the red of his coat dark and his hair speckled with it. The form of what had been the woman fizzles away into the slimy, gray leather skin of a demon. Its face is struck into pain before it bursts into dust.

"Damn shape shifters. More annoying than a hangnail."

"What the hell is going on!" Dante demands, pulling Ebony and Ivory from their holsters, but find them gone.

"Calm down, will ya?" a voice says from behind him, and Dante spends to find two men, both with the same snowy white hair as him. One of them holds his twin guns, spinning them expertly on his fingers. He has two of his own, one strapped to each thigh. The only stands in the back, arms crossed over his chest. "We got enough demons chasing us as it is, we don't need more because of your loud mouth."

"Raz," the woman scolds, jumping onto the same platform as Dante to stand beside him. "Give them back. Don't make me tell Sera."

"Tattle-tell," Raz answers, sticking out his tongue before tossing the two guns back to the half devil. The woman frowns, but nods when they are back in Dante's possession.

"Dante, I know things are going a bit fast, but we can explain as soon as we're back at Headquarters and-"

"I'm not going _anywhere_ until someone explains how the hell I'm in _Limbo_ right now."

The group of the children of the Divine stand still, each looking at the other before one of them speaks up.

"The shapeshifter was right, in the most sense. You are, as we are, Nephilim. A child a divine being. Because of your demonic blood you can pass between the worlds, from the Human realm to Limbo and everywhere in between or further out. When you were a child you and your brother were separated, hidden from the world so that the demons who fought for Mundus could not find you."

The concrete platform shifts, and as it begins to tilt backwards, the woman to Dante's left leaps onto a floating car. Her silver hair, which he could have sworn was brown not two minutes ago, flowing behind her. It settles back into messy curls around her shoulders. He follows her, leaping onto the same car.

The other male, the one with the dark skin and stoic expression, continues. "The same happened with us. It was not just your father, Sparda, who fought to stop Mundus. Others; his brothers who had not fallen and those that had, also fought with him. Our parents. After the war and after Mundus was sealed away, they were left in the human realm, unable to return to their home in _Paradiso,_ such as Ariel's father. Or, in our father's case, the _Inferno_ like Sparda. They took settlement on Earth and found companionship. Our mothers."

Dante continues to follow Ariel, _finally he knew her name_ , and she lands on the same surface of broken asphalt as the two men.

"Laurel and Sera found us," Ariel says, motioning to the older male of the two that had arrived; the one that explained of the angel and demon parents. "There are more of us, Dante. So many more, but they don't realize their potential. Limbo is the best way for us to travel. There are rifts that can transport us long distances in seconds. That's how we found you. The rifts only take us to places with other Nephilim. It was a way for our parents to keep us in touch with the others."

"So this rift, it brought you to Capulet City because of me?"

"Of course. The other half of our group is off looking for another Nephilim nearby. However, he isn't the same percentage of divine blood as us, but he still holds great power. We were surprised to find him so close-"

"Nero."

Ariel nods to Dante, and the group of four bounces from platform to platform before they come to a large rune like circle glowing bright white on an old brick wall.

"Yes, we thought you may be familiar with him after the Savior incident a few months ago."

Dante snorts in amusement at the memory, but he keeps to his thoughts. Things were slowly beginning to make sense to him, now.

"And, after all, he is your nephew, so the resemblance must be uncanny."

The half devil stares at the older male of the group, Laurel. He's looking ahead, face void of any emotion and his dark eyes are off in the distance. Did he just hear him right?

"Wait, hold on a second. You're saying that the kid is-"

"The son of your brother, yes," Ariel confirms, looking at the man almost sheepishly. "I take it you didn't know?"

"Of course I didn't know! If it wasn't for the fact that he's a guy, I wouldn't have thought Vergil even had a dick!"

Raz laughs loudly before all four enter through the glowing gate of ancient runes. There's another flash of orange tunnel, and Dante feels like he's being tugged in all directions before everything stands still. They're inside an abandoned building, back from the realm of Limbo. The sounds of scurrying mice are the only thing heard as Dante does a quick once over of the three he has just met.

Laurel, the oldest, sweeps his black hair away from his forehead, before he leads the pack out of the building. Raz, the youngest of the three males, walks with a bounce in his step, hands clasped behind his head. Dante brings up the back, Ariel walking off to the side, but still in front of him. Her curly hair barely reaches past her shoulders. Some places are tangled while others are still in their tight brunette swirls.

"Hey, why is your hair not white anymore?"

The cause of his silver hair had always been a question for Dante. He had had it since he could remember, since childhood. The only way their mother could tell the difference between Dante and Vergil, was Vergil's constant fidgeting to keep his hair out of his eyes. Dante couldn't have cared any less and let the mop of silver locks go wherever they wished.

"It is a part of your power manifested," Laurel says, but Dante looks to Ariel for an explanation.

"Your Devil Trigger, as you call it," Ariel begins, "is an embodiment of your father's demonic power. When you trigger, you take on a demonic warrior form, that looks much like his own. Because of who your father was, and genetics if you want to get scientific, your hair remains white. Our fathers and genetics give us different characteristics. No Nephilims are ever exactly alike."

Dante continues to look at her, and Ariel sighs.

"For example," she says, emphasizing her words. "My father's power is manifested in my bow. My arrows are the feathers from the wings I gain when I 'trigger'. In human realm it looks like a quiver, in Limbo you can see its true form."

She looks to Raz, motioning to the jolly blonde. "Raz's power is his speed and his ability to read the minds of other people. However, he hasn't quite mastered us Nephilim just yet."

 _Jackass._

Raz looks to Dante, narrowing his eyes before scoffing and walking faster to catch up with Laurel.

"And Laurel's power is in his sword. He can also take on some of the demon aspects his father possessed, and it looks a bit like your trigger, but still, quite different."

"What about the others? You said there was another half of your group?"

"Right. Seraphael and Isisah. They prefer Sera and Izzy, respectively. Sera is Laurel's older sister. She also possess a Devil's Arm and a Trigger, like her brother, but she can take on multiple forms during her trigger. Almost like a shape shifter but she still has her limits.

"Izzy is... very withdrawn from the group. He's hesitant to let us know anything, seeing as he comes from a very abusive foster household. We believe he may hold a very physical power, seeing as he refuses to let us see it."

"And that's putting it lightly," Raz comments with a smirk. Ariel sends a look to the blonde, who holds his hands up in surrender and says no more. "I'll be quiet."

"As I was saying," Ariel sends one last look to the younger. "Each Nephilim is different depending on who their divine parent was and genetics. If the mother was strong, spiritually, then the child has a strong mental manifestation. If the mother was strong in the physical aspect, this is shown in the power of Devil Arms and strength."

"You know an awful lot about Nephilims," Dante says, and the brunette nods.

"My mother was a college professor. Loved mythology and legends more than anything. Well, except for my father and me. Back when he was still on Earth, she would listen to him tell stories of all the Nephilim in history. She wrote a book of notes for me and that's what I go off of."

"Was a professor?"

Ariel smiles remorsefully.

"When I was seventeen she got in a car accident. Spinal injury. Lost all motor functions. She died a few years ago."

Dante looks ahead, not daring to see Ariel's mournful expression.

"My mother was killed by demons."

"You saw it, didn't you?"

Dante nods.

"I can tell in your voice. You have nightmares."

"Don't we all?" Dante ended the conversation there. Ariel doesn't open her mouth.

"Come, Seraphael is waiting for us," Laurel says, looking over his shoulder for only a glance's worth of time. "She and Isisah have Nero. We shall regroup and go to the next rift point."

"Wait, hold up a second," Dante says. He takes two steps away from the trio and puts his hands on his hips. "Just because I agreed to listen to whatever spill you have, doesn't mean I'm going with you."

"But Dante, we _have_ to stick together. The world is in danger-"

"From some powerful demon overlord yadda, yadda I've heard it a thousand times. Look, you all seem very nice and I wish you luck on your quest, but I'm not going anymore. Capulet City is mine to protect. Besides, I can't just leave the girls with all the demon killing fun."

"Look, man, I don't think you understand the severity of the situation-"

Laurel holds up his hand to silence Raz, and the blonde quickly seals the rest of his sentences in his throat. The eldest of the group walks forward and places a hand on Ariel's shoulder.

"You have made your decision and we shall respect that. Leave whenever you wish."

"But Laurel-" Ariel is also silenced with a hand. She turns to Dante, with an almost furious look on her face before she sighs out the anger. Dante's left eyebrow raises a few centimeters.

"Severity of the situation?" Dante repeats quietly, looking to Ariel, again, for one last explanation.

She glances to Laurel and Raz who are whispering loudly to one another.

"This isn't just some demon overlord, Dante. This is someone who holds tenfold the power that Mundus could possible _wish_ to possess."

 _That bad, huh?_

Dante is intrigued. Someone worse than Mundus? Improbable, but possible.

"And who just might this not-your-average-demon-overlord be?"

"The Lord of Demons," Ariel says, before casting her eyes down as if fearing to speak a more specific name.

"And that would be?"

"Lucifer," Laurel answers for Ariel, stilling holding his stoic expression.

"Wait. You mean Satan?"

Ariel nods, and Dante can't hold back the laugh any longer.

"Are you serious? Oh, you guys are hilarious. C'mon, now. Be serious with me. We all know he's been locked up in a cage munching on sinners since before that dude that could walk on water was around. Who in their right minds would release him, let alone have the _power_ to do it?"

Dante wishes he had never asked that question.

"Your brother."


End file.
